BSG Newsletter - Issue 6, 2015/16

Newsletter

Issue 6 - 2015/16

“Our BSG FOBISIA Games stars achieved several medals in what was a terrific tournament for the team. Known as the ‘Crazy Club’, these students have shown incredible commitment and dedication — proving 7am training sessions can lead to great success!” Mark Thomas, Principal To download a copy of this newsletter, please visit www.bsg.org.cn |

BritishSchoolGZ |

bsgnae

message from the principal

Dear Parents, With any luck, by the time you read this, the storms that have characterised the start of June will have moved on and we will be enjoying a few more blue skies. We are now well into the examination season with Secondary students involved in their IGCSE and A-level examinations, and Primary students sitting their SAT tests. I am looking forward to receiving the final results after the summer holiday and am confident that results will continue to show that ‘BSG is a school where you can have a great time and achieve impressive academic results’.

I would like to thank everyone who was involved in helping us to prepare for the CIS accreditation visit. The visit itself was the culmination of almost 2 years of preparation. While we will not receive the written report until next term, I was particularly pleased that they noted the school as having, ‘an impressively harmonious environment’. To be of value, an accreditation process should note strengths and provide targets. I can tell you that our teachers have already begun to work on those targets within a 2-year development plan. This document will cover any CIS targets but will also take into account issues or suggestions from the NAE parental and the employee engagement surveys conducted earlier this year.

Rehearsals for this year’s Primary production are well under way. The Wizard of Oz is a wonderful show that was actually performed by our Secondary students 8 years ago. Over the last few years, demand for tickets has meant that we have outgrown our school venues. We have therefore taken the decision to perform at the Unkai Hotel. Tickets can be booked online but I would urge you to do so early to avoid missing out.

The Primary performance is one of the highlights of the school year and if previous performances are anything to go by, you will not be disappointed.

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As our Secondary students come to the end of their first year in their new building, it is hard to believe that for so long, they shared the Nanhu building with Primary. This summer, a huge number of building projects

will be undertaken to ensure that we continue to make year-on-year improvements to our facilities. One of the most exciting projects will more than double the size of the Primary canteen and provide additional space within the kitchen. This will allow the catering team to add additional food options for the students, as well as improving our lunchtime environment. This term, the Year 6 students have been eating lunch on the Secondary site as part of their transition programme. This has been great for the Year 6 students and has also helped ease congestion in the Primary canteen. Last month, our Primary student council also met with the facilities team to put forward their ideas for playground improvements. We were impressed by their ideas and also by the way they articulated their ideas. I am looking forward to seeing these improvements when I return in August.

Well done to the Primary FOBISIA team for their performances in Malaysia. I was pleased to note that the hours of additional training with our dedicated PE teachers paid off. FOBISIA sports events are extremely competitive and students meet other equally talented and well-drilled teams. Teachers, parents and students did everything possible to prepare for this competition and I am extremely proud of them. This year, we had a larger contingent of parent supporters who went along to enjoy the event and as a result have received an impressive number of excellent photographs of students in action.

With the year drawing to an end Nord Anglia have recently announced a partnership with MIT, who are probably the most famous science, maths and technology university in the world. This partnership will provide some truly exciting opportunities for our students and once again demonstrates the advantage in belonging to the world’s premium schools organisation.

Yours truly,

Goodbye to our Graduates

Incredibly it’s that time of year again when we say goodbye to the next cohort of BSG graduates, who are preparing to head off to universities around the world.

These students have just completed their A-Level courses, and like all who leave us, we wish them the very best on the paths to their chosen careers.

Our Alumni Association is available through LinkedIn here. We encourage our Year 13s to join the network and stay in touch with BSG, as we would love to follow their progress.

Mark Thomas Principal

40% off all current uniform items

As we approach the scheduled uniform change for all Primary and Secondary students in August 2016, we are pleased to announce this reduction. More information on the upcoming changes will follow soon.

Important information is often sent via email.

If you are not receiving emails, please contact our receptionist, Lily Huang at lily@bsg.org.cn

FOCUS

Junior Maths Olympiad 2016

By: Nicola Welch The Secondary Mathematics Department is pleased to announce that two Key Stage 3 students have been invited to participate in the prestigious 2016 Junior Mathematical Olympiad.

Tian Wang (Year 8) and Mabel Ng (Year 7) both achieved the necessary result in the recent UKMT Junior Challenge to not only earn a Gold Certificate but to also secure entry into this elite global contest.

Only 1200 students globally are invited to take the 2-hour long exam which will test all of their mathematical faculties, and so qualification for this is a phenomenal achievement.

We wish them well for Tuesday 14 June, when they will undertake this challenge and perhaps earn further glories.

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Teacher FOCUS

Meet Natasha Wildy, one of the enthusiastic Secondary teachers at the British School of Guangzhou. Her vivacious and driven personality nurtures her students’ ambitions and stimulates their love of Mathematics. We sat down with Natasha for a quick interview about her experiences as an expat teacher living in Guangzhou and how her family adapted to this city.

Name: Natasha Wildy Country of Residence: China Country of Origin: UK Subjects I teach: Mathematics Grades I teach: Years 7- 13 Places I’ve lived: South Africa, England, Wales, Finland and China 1. What was your first reaction when you first arrived to Guangzhou?

I thought that it was busy, hot and it rained a lot!

After leaving Wales I assumed that I had escaped the rain...

2. What is the best thing about being a teacher?

Personally, being able to develop a love of Maths in students and getting them to see how it applies to real life situations is the best part of teaching.

3. What is the most challenging thing about being a teacher?

It can be challenging to keep up with the amount of work students can get through here at BSG and the level of Maths that the students can be at. I am amazed at the level that students at BSG can push themselves to. It is incredible.

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Teacher FOCUS

4. What sort of advice can you give to parents moving to a new city with children?

The best advice would be to make friends with someone who has been here for a while as they can offer a breadth of local knowledge, which will help when finding your way around a new city and sourcing various necessities. Also, you should get involved with as much as you can within the community in order to meet other families and make new friends.

5. How does BSG compare to other schools you’ve taught at?

It is such a friendly school, I love that staff talk and socialise together.

Everyone seems to have a common enthusiasm for what they do which is refreshing.

6. Who was your role model growing up and why?

My mum was definitely my role model when growing up; she was a teacher as was my entire family. Funnily enough, she actually tried to persuade me not to go into teaching but because she was so good at what she did it had the opposite effect. I ended up becoming a teacher myself and following in her footsteps.

7. What is the one lesson that you want your students to take away with them at the end of the academic year?

Persevere even when things are difficult and never give up! By practising and trying harder in order to improve the achievement will be great.

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8. Your favourite quote when it comes to education: “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein (who was remarkably told that he was rubbish at algebra and maths).

9. What do you do when you get homesick?

I like to go to a western restaurant and eat cheese, as it is the one thing that I truly miss from the UK (apart from pickled onion monster munch).

10. How has your family coped with the move to Guangzhou?

They were worried to start with but instantly fell in love with Guangzhou.

They are involved in everything and participate in an endless list of extra curricular activities e.g. orchestra, Fobisia, Musical instrument lessons, school productions, maths club, after school activities and baseball, which has helped them to meet lots of people and make new friends.

community

Hopeful Hearts Update By: Gemma Campbell On a recent visit to the hospital with Hopeful Hearts Guangzhou, we saw baby Wen Junxi just 5 days after his surgery. He was still as smiley as before but understandably a little tired. We are pleased to announce that his surgery was a success and he has already been released from the hospital. We gave him a little BSG panda and wished him and his family all the best for the future Our current running total is a phenomenal 234,166.4RMB! That is 5283.5 RMB more than last year! We are still waiting for a few more events to take place and the final amount raised from all of the EYFS bake sales this year to be submitted.

I have been blown away by the generosity of our school community this year, I would like to thank everyone for your contributions to this year’s charitable initiatives, and look forward to keeping young hearts beating in 2016/17.

Please visit our website for more charitable information and updates.

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early years foundation

The Great Outdoors By: Lynne Abraham Here at BSG, it is our mission to provide all of our students with a lifelong love of learning.

At Lakefront one way we promote this love of learning is by taking our learning experiences outside to the wonderful outdoor environment we are fortunate to have here on our campus.

Outdoor learning experiences can be remembered for a lifetime. Here in Pre-Nursery we work very closely with the Nursery team to create an enjoyable, relevant, creative, adventurous and most important of all FUN experience when learning outdoors.

In term 3 Pre-Nursery have been looking at ‘transport’ as one of our topics. To support this topic we set up a ‘Pre-Nursery carwash’ where our children worked hard to wash our toy cars using good old sponges and soap.

Our children loved this and some of us ended up very wet! Luckily the sun was shining and it didn’t take us very long to be dry again.

We are always trying to embed our core values into all of our learning experiences and taking our learning outdoors enhances our potential to do so. Our children were learning how to be ‘responsible’ by washing ‘the dishes’ in our outdoor water table. We love to play with the water here in Pre-Nursery as not only is it a lovely sensory activity, but it provides excellent opportunities for extended learning, enhance language development and advance social and emotional skills.

Taking our learning outdoors is a fantastic opportunity for us to help our children work on their gross and fine motor skills, social and life skills, coordination and creativity….the list of learning opportunities is endless.

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early years foundation

A Painless Transition By: Iwona Krasa It is this time of the year when the Nursery children are beginning to prepare for the move up to Reception after the summer holiday. To help them with this transition, the Nursery and Reception teachers arranged some special activities during which the five Nursery classes could experience the privilege of being ‘big’ children from Reception.

experienced many things for the first time ever in school such as using ageappropriate knives, refilling their cups with lemon water all by themselves, and not to mention helping themselves to pastries! It was fun for everybody but a valuable lesson at the same time, as the teachers helped their students to learn some good eating habits the dining hall.

The Butterflies, Dolphins, Hedgehogs, Fishes and Ladybirds were all kindly invited to join Reception for their afternoon outdoor learning. This was an extremely exciting time of the day for all Nursery children. They loved being able to explore the ‘big’ playground and learn hand in hand with their older peers. They were overwhelmed with the variety of fun activities on offer, with the fantastic playing equipment consisting of climbing frames being an unquestionable number one amongst the Nursery lot. Boys and girls bravely challenged themselves to climb up to the top of the frames and down again, skillfully exercising their gross motor skills. Afternoons in Reception were an amazing opportunity for the Nursery students to get to know their prospective teachers, learn behavioural expectations and become more familiar with all the ‘cool’ things waiting for them next year.

The period of transition is always an experience that triggers emotions.

This time I am certain it triggered only positive ones. The Reception and Nursery teachers made sure that all of the Nursery classes had an absolutely wonderful time, ensuring that they would be eager to join such a vibrant Reception setting in their continued academic journey at BSG!

Another thrilling way of bringing the Nursery children closer to Reception was having lunch in the Dining Hall.

The children were bursting with excitement when they were allowed to independently select what they wanted at the salad bar! That was a very special lunch indeed as the children

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early years foundation

No Grey Areas In Reception

By Jill Stenburge

During the week commencing Monday 25th April there were strange and exciting occurrences on the Lake Front campus. Every corner you turned you saw a curious sight, whether it was Mr. Alfie wearing an apron baking hundreds of cupcakes, small childsized pandas wandering around the corridors or 300 people dressed in only black and white clothes dancing to Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ song! It could only be ‘Panda Week’, where the Reception children showed lots of responsibility and commitment in helping to bake and sell 500 panda themed cupcakes to the Lakefront and Hillside children in order to raise as much money as they could for our adopted panda ‘Ming Ming’. In Reception the children have been learning about endangered animals, in particular China’s national treasure, the panda.

We also had ‘Black and White Day’ on the Friday where we held panda parties which involved games such as ‘pin the nose on the panda’, a black and white themed disco, panda craft and panda face painting to celebrate this most great event. It was a very successful and enjoyable week and we managed to raise a staggering 4,490 RMB in total. Ming Ming the panda will certainly be having only the best quality bamboo from now on!

Thank you to all who took part in this fantastic event, it was definitely one of the most memorable weeks ever.

I would also like to extend a special thank you to the BSG community for their support of this worthwhile cause.

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early years foundation

Juilliard Visit By: Oushu Lin On Tuesday 31st May we had a cellist, Andrea Lee, from the Juilliard School in New York, America visit our Early Years campus to deliver music workshops to our students.

Andrea began her workshops with a rhyming activity “Hello, Cello�, helping the children to remember the name of the instrument and feel close to it as well. The children were all amazed by the sound of the cello and a highlight of the sessions was singing along with the cello.

Her engaging and interactive workshops inspired our children to listen and appreciate music, as well as encouraging them to develop their own performing skills. An extremely valuable visit for our very youngest of students.

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PRIMARY

Treasure Hunt Fun In Year 1!

By: Tony Schaverien There was excitement in the air and smiles all around as Year 1 concluded our “Pirates” topic with a magnificent treasure hunt around the school.

Over the course of this term the friendly pirate “One-Eye” has set the children riddles and a number of challenges to complete. The children have come up with their own pirate names, made pirate badges, learnt all kinds of pirate rules and have designed and built their own pirate ships.

As a reward for all their hard work, “One-Eye” scattered some of his most valuable treasure around the school. The children put their excellent map work and directional language skills to good use to find “One-Eye’s” precious bounty. There were enough treats for all when the children shared out everything they had found.

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PRIMARY

Amazing Animal Adaptations Y2 have spent the last few weeks learning all about habitats, animals that live in these habitats and then also thoroughly enjoyed inventing some of their own animals for their English writing. From birds with noses like anteaters to apes with beaks, or snakes with wings to birds with tails like monkeys, there were strange adaptations appearing in all the rainforest stories and reports.

If David Attenborough had spotted these with his binoculars his eyes may well have fallen out!

The children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the rainforest and inventing a new adaptation of animal. Additionally, children made a diorama of a habitat, conducting research to identify what animals and plants lived there. They have been able to use their imagination to create some wonderful written work and also had the opportunity to draw their animals using oil pastels- if you get the chance do stop by and have a read and look at all of the wonderful learning.

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PRIMARY

Poetry Pop Stars By: Victoria Brooks In Year 4 the students have been using their amazing poetry skills to compete in the very first BSG ‘Poetry Pop stars’ competition. The students formed their very own pop bands and chose a famous song, which they had to re-write the entire lyrics using poetic devices, choreograph some funky dance moves and perform to the rock n’ roll crowd of Year 4.

The contestants were: • • • • • • • • • •

The Sparklers The Republic S.H.A.A.A The Smashers 76 Rock The Rock n Rollers LMNTrix The 3 Rockers The Triplets Star Rockers

On the day of the performance, two mystery hosts “Brooksy” and “Sandy” joined us. Also, 3 fashionable, musical genius judges arrived to decide the winners of the prestigious trophy. Each group took their turn and performed their hearts out. The crowd went wild! The judges clapped! And the hosts boogied to the funky tunes. But in the end there could only be one winner…

• In 3rd place was: S.H.A.A.A • In 2nd place was: The 3 Rockers • In1st place was: 76 ROCK! Congratulations to Meya Zhang, Rou Yu Yap, Insiya Vakharia, Lucas Wang and Ariane Wu who took home the trophies. Needless to say it was a tough decision - there really are some talented students in Year 4 at BSG! Well done to everybody – an outstanding achievement. Look out for Poetry Pop Stars 2017!

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PRIMARY

A Thrilling Spring For Year 6 By: Nicole Xie & Amelie Piggott Lots of things have happened recently in Year 6, so we thought you might like to take a sneaky peek!

To start off, an Indian Extravaganza was held in the dance studio on the 29th of April. Students (and parents) were able to enjoy hours of fun, as well as see some displays of the children’s recent work.

A dance led by Mrs. Robb and Miss Maher was soon underway as the children snaked down the stage, prowling at the enthusiastic parents. Following that, pupils and parents were both amazed

by Mr. Bennett’s students’ puppet show. We all learnt something from that! Do you hear that? That’s the trumpets trumpeting, performing a piece called Indian Sunset! This was a traditional song that used to make snakes dance, now possessed Mr. Williamson’s students as they twisted their bodies with the music.

Next, we saw 6C performing a traditional Indian song ‘Under the Lemon Tree’. Sweet voices fill the room as the drum echoed on, and the parents overwhelmed the students with huge applause.

Along with the main activities, throughout the afternoon, several children got henna tattoos; a tradition Indian temporary tattoo.

Drinks and biscuits were also available, as well as the samosas children had spent all morning making with the help of parents.

6C welcomed some unique visitors (puppies) at the end of April to help them with their project: to help a charity organisation without using any money. They learnt how stray dogs strive to survive in the streets, and what dog shelters (especially My Paws and Me) are doing to help them.

As well as this, an assembly was held to promote the franchise and educate students about homeless dogs. Some students constructed donation boxes to place at the reception, so that other children would be encouraged to give donations.

In response to our science lessons, pupils in Year 6 got a chance to witness a cow’s eye being dissected. They learnt how different parts of an eye work, and how a cow’s eye is different to a human’s eye. Some students were in awe when they saw the beautiful retina. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Williamson - who dissected the eyeball for us - sawed and sawed at the eyeball, eventually cutting into it. It exploded into a huge mass of vitreous humor, a black juice that prevents light from bouncing around the retina, spraying the dissecting tray in gooey bits. Then we were able to take out the lens and irises to inspect them individually, as well as touching the gelatinous part of the lens. Overall the dissecting experience was amazingly gruesome and extremely fascinating; I’m sure all of us are excited for secondary school where we get to do it all by ourselves!

This spring has been full of surprises and endless excitement. Now, we look forward to the primary FOBISIA games and our 2016 school production!

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PRIMARY

Sports Day By: Rachael Troughton Students in Years 3-6 took part in Sports Day at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. It was a fantastic day with students in each house competing against each other for the ultimate award, the House Sports Day Trophy!

Students competed in long distance track events, sprinting events, relays along with high jump, long jump and throwing events, similar to events at the annual FOBISIA event. Some also chose to take part in the more ‘fun’ events such as the 3 legged race and the Oreo cookie challenge.

We had some great races and for some events, it was so close on the finish line!

Many students won medals in a range of different events and everybody was in great spirits. The overall results were: Overall Sports Day Winners: Romans Year 6 Winners: Vikings Year 5 Winners: Romans Year 4 Winners: Vikings Year 3 Winners: Romans Some notable highlights of the day were: Amanda in Year 5 who won the 100m in 16.06s Osman in Year 4 won the 60m in 9.85s Yaffa in Year 3 who won the Long Jump in 2.43m Oscar and Orren in Year 6 who came joint first in the high jump in Year 6 with 1.10m.

Vikings who won the house relay in Year 5 boys.

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We look forward to the next interhouse events coming up at the end of term, which are swimming and climbing to see who wins the overall trophy at the end of year awards ceremony.

PRIMARY

Silver Stars Shine At Sports Spectacular The team sports of Football and T-Ball By: Paul Corr BSG was represented at the 2016 Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBSIA) Games by 42 of our finest Primary athletes.

This prestigious tournament was hosted by the British International School of Kuala Lumpur (BISKL), where our team battled against 6 other top international schools for highly sought after medals in each of the 4 disciplines of Swimming, Track & Field, T-Ball and Football.

The amount of work that goes into preparing for a tournament of this magnitude is immense. With all seven competing schools sending 14 of their best athletes from each year group in Upper Primary (Years 4, 5 &6), the standard of competition is always intense. BSG knows this from previous years and this year staff and students made a huge commitment in the lead up to The Games with early morning training sessions taking place before school 3 times per week, coaching sessions each lunchtime plus more weekend and inter-school sport than in any other previous year. We really should acknowledge just how much effort staff and students put in during the months before the event as this was the foundation for a confident team setting off for Malaysia this year.

are always tough for BSG as the limited leagues in Guangzhou offer fewer opportunities for formal competition against top class opposition than perhaps schools coming from international hubs such as Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok are afforded.

Nevertheless, our teams showed real grit, competing hard in each match as our boys and girls made sure that each team we played knew there was a new kid on the block that meant business.

Some really tight games and fantastic improvements made on previous performances but ultimately the competition was just too strong for us to place in medal positions this year. A special mention must go to the Y6 Girls Football Team and the Y4 T-Ball Team, both narrowly missed out on medals as they gave some of the hot favourites a real fright. Tremendous stuff from all.

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Swimming has also been traditionally challenging for BSG athletes but the addition of year-round swimming within the school curriculum and some superb individual medal hauls from our superstars meant that as we entered the final stages of the meet, anticipation was high that our team may place in the top three — possibly walking away with an overall medal for the first time in BSG history. Alas, with strength in depth lacking, we struggled in the double point relay events towards the end and slipped down the table out of contention for a podium finish for one more year. Heads were high though as it was clear that a new swimming force was brewing at the FOBSIA Games with many already discussing strategy and plans for that little bit extra needed and a place on the rostrum next year.

BSG were expected to do quite well in Track & Field. Even though we had never placed in the top three at any previous Primary Games, Director of Sport, Mr Andrew ‘Deano’ Dean, noted spirits were high in camp and that if each member of the talented squad performed to their potential, giving their all, we may just mange to squeeze a podium finish with a coveted trophy as a prize to help put Guangzhou on the FOBISIA sporting map. High aspirations indeed and considering the competition we faced, a 4th or even a 5th place would have been a credit to our boys and girls but his confidence was infectious and certainly appreciated by the team he lead.

What happened next will go down in BSG sporting history. One by one our atheltes walked out into the ‘New Camp’ stadium to represent their school and one by one each performance glowed.

Our parent supporters could not believe just how much each student 18

was fighting for every single point. We were picking up individual medals everywhere, creating a real buzz within our team and some very worried faces amongst the pre-event favourites for the tournamnet.

Did we have the necessary strength to navigate the tricky double point relay events successfully and get onto the overall winners podium for the first time ever? YES WE COULD! And not even a bronze! Our lads and lasses pushed themselves to the limit to gain an amazing overall 2nd place and a coveted silver medal in the overall rankings for Track and Field. Wow! Pats on the backs, smiles and joy filed the air on the bus to the hotel. Rightly so, as every member of the talented hardworking squad deserved this moment of glory.

Over the three days of intense international competition, each and every one of the 42 athletes that represented our school this year gave truly inspirational performances. Most importantly though was a growing sense of team confidence and belief that will help ensure that sporting success at the British School of Guangzhou continues under the sure hands of a PE staff that have truly brought a love of learning to the pitches, tracks and pools of your school this year. Well done to our talented team and a huge thank you to our amazing group of traveling parent supporters, GO RHINOS!

PRIMARY

Year 6 Indian Culture Week

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SECONDARY

Chimelong Ocean Kingdom Art Trip By: Hollie Slaughter On the 4th of May, 15 Year 10 Art students along with Ms. Slaughter, Ms. Barrenechea and Mr. Wildy visited Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, Panyu, to experience the underwater world as part of the IGCSE Assessment Objective number one: gathering and recording visual research. The Art students were given the difficult task of drawing the vibrant fish swimming in the record breaking, vast aquarium.

They used pen, pencil or watercolour to capture the shapes, textures and colours as well as the movement of the shoals through exciting mark making and drawing techniques in their sketchbooks.

It was a long day involving four hours of travelling, but the experience was worthwhile in that it launched their IGCSE coursework project based around the theme ‘Underwater Life’.

You can see the results of the project in the BSG Coursework Art Exhibition that will be on show in January 2017.

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SECONDARY

Pen Pals When was the last time you physically wrote a letter? No, it’s not about writing a birthday card, or a letter to Santa Claus. I bet most of you haven’t even written a letter before! Luckily, our Year 5 CFL 2 and Year 8 CFL 2 students got a chance to write a letter to an unknown pen pal. You can’t imagine how excited they were when they received letters from pen pals. Everybody cheered and screamed!

Let’s see what they said about this activity: Rolan, Year 5: When I first saw the news, I was very exited about the activity. Therefore I started planning immediately. After I finished writing and sent the letter, I was quite desperate to know the reply from my pen pal. It took a really long time to send and receive, so after a few weeks, many of my classmates forgot about it. However, I was still really looking forward to the reply. Eventually, I received the letter. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed when my pen pal wrote my name wrong.

Lily, Year 5: I really like to write letters because I can have new friends while practicing how to write letters. My friend can also meet new friends and we can learn things from each other. I can know about things in HK and my friend can too.

April, Year 5: When I got the letter my friend gave to me, I was really happy. That time I wanted to know what was in side. I really like to write the letters to my friend.

Gia, Year 8: It’s a great opportunity to interact with our fellow peers in other schools. Through this event, we got to experience what it was like for other people in the Nord Anglia Education group and make friends with them.

Coco, Year 8: I really like this activity because it’s a really good opportunity to communicate and share our school life with students that are in a different schools, especially students that are in a different city. We discussed and chatted about our school life and what we have been learning through out the whole school year in Chinese lessons. We also talked about our hobbies and personalities.

It’s really good that we can have a chance to make a pen friend while learning the skill to write a letter and improving our Chinese vocabulary and skills.

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SECONDARY

English & Literacy Report This term has been an extremely busy and productive one for the secondary English department.

Library To start off with, we have placed a huge focus on developing the secondary school library. As such, we have new texts arriving daily and the shelves are filling up fast with a great number of engaging and exciting reads. The library is quickly becoming a hub where students come to learn and engage in independent learning, which is lovely to see. In addition to this, we have been very excited about the launch of our new online library (www.bsg.lib.overdrive.com) where we have now bought over 300 fiction and non-fiction texts, giving students and their families access to literature at any time, anywhere. The texts on this new system are labelled by level of difficulty as well as age appropriateness so it is a great way for students to analyse and extend their reading habits.

English Over the course of this year, students have studied a huge variety of poetry, from different authors who come from all around the world. Inspired by this, many students have produced their own poems, some of which have been chosen to feature in our anthology, which will be published soon. The anthology has been created in association with the art department and features some beautiful map work that the students have created as well.

Outside of school, on the Global Campus, we have had two winners in the Creative Writing competition, Ryan Vicedo (Upper Secondary) and Selina Yang (Lower Secondary). Not only this, but Ryan was asked by the Global Campus head office if they could display a copy of his poem in the main office, showing the outstanding level of work produced. We also had a team of 12 students who entered this year’s Battle of the Books, which our senior team won.

In addition to this, approximately 20 students have been involved in the setting up and running of the new student voice online magazine, The BSG Times (www.bsgtimes.com). There has been a focus on extending the student voice and we are encouraging all students, not just those signed up to the ASA, to contribute to the site content by writing articles and opinion columns, as well as to enter competitions and vote for ideas so that their voice is heard and of course, house points can be won! The magazine is providing students with great opportunities to display our core values and to step out of their comfort zone. For example, recently, three of our year 7 students were invited by the music department to interview our Julliard visitor. They were prepped by Mrs. Gidwani, who is the chief editor of Urban Family in how to run an interview and then how to write it up into an engaging and lively article. A great experience for serious aspiring journalists. This is also due to be published soon.

As we close the year down, we will be giving students a fun summer challenge to read as many books that have been made into movies as they can, and to watch their movie counterpart. We will be taking a poll of which was better - the book or the movie!

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SECONDARY

Enterprise week By: Francine Hearn

Enterprise week held on 12th – 19th April was a very successful enterprise project offering Year 10 Business Studies and Economics students a chance to unleash ideas and make their mark. The event was held on the Primary and Hillside campuses and on the Secondary campus during lunchtimes.

Students formed partnerships and sold various goods and services from homemade cupcakes, model planes, helium balloons and fancy dress to bouncy balls and toasted marshmallows.

Prior to the event, students were responsible for planning Enterprise Week including marketing the event as well as their own goods and services.

Entrepreneurship is exciting, challenging yet risky, students invested their own money in the products they sold not knowing whether they would break even let alone make a profit. With the right marketing mix, all groups broke even.

Students also donated a percentage of their profits to the Hopeful Hearts charity with a total of 815RMB donated.

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SECONDARY

Multi-Lingual Students By: Nick McKenna May and June are often a stressful time for students in Secondary as KS4 and KS5 students regularly take external examinations. In Languages, students are often required to sit four separate exams in listening, speaking, reading and writing so extra preparation and revision time is required.

Although this extra study can be demanding for Language students, it also gives us the opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the backgrounds and the linguistic talents of our students.

This year, IGCSE or A-Level examinations were taken in ten different languages: Chinese First Language, Chinese as an Additional Language, Dutch First Language, English, English as an Additional Language, French, German, Japanese, Bahasa Malaysia and Spanish.

The Languages Departments wish the students well in their examinations and look forward to celebrating their achievements when they receive their results in August.

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Science Week

The end of April saw BSG celebrate Science Week and this year was bigger and better than ever with students from all years taking part in a plethora of events.

One activity that involved all of our students was the inter-form quiz that tested pupils knowledge of all things science. Our resident Einsteins proved to be 7C who won the challenge for lower school, whereas 9B put in a magnificent performance to beat the rest of upper school (including 13A where many are off to study science at University!).

Another test of knowledge saw Mr McDaid, Miss Giles and Miss Barrenechea take on a group of Key Stage 3 students in a battle to see who would be crowned the school brainiacs. The lead changed hands numerous times throughout the contest but in the end the teachers managed to hold on for a narrow victory. It was a great performance from both teams but I am confident that next year the students will take their crown.

For those that felt driven to pursue personal glories there was also a Science Scavenger Hunt that required the students to answer questions relating to pictures of famous scientists hidden around the school. Congratulations to Aditi Telang and Justin Li who won the KS3 and KS4 categories respectively.

For those of a certain disposition the most eagerly awaited activity during Science Week was dissection day. Twenty students enjoyed exploring the inner workings of the eye, the lungs and the heart and honed some slick scalpel skills in the process.

It wasn’t just Secondary that had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of Science as both year 5 and year 6 helped our year 9 classes investigate the Bluetooth systems on our school iPads. Special mention must go to Federica Ye in 5B who produced an outstanding report relaying her findings. She’ll certainly be one to watch out for in the future!

To prove that Science isn’t all facts and figures and to underline the importance of imagination and original thought, Miss Burgess ran a caption competition where pupils had to annotate the picture from the cover of their textbooks. There were plenty of fantastic entries but in the end the winners were………………. A huge well done and who knows, perhaps one day these guys will be reporting on the next big scientific breakthroughs or penning Hollywood comedy scripts.

Finally, congratulations to BSG as a whole for being the first school outside of Europe to complete an investigation into the production of titanium dioxide based suspensions used to protect astronauts from UV rays. This accomplishment marked the end of a great week and no doubt next year’s achievements will be even more impressive.

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Sports Report The final term of the year has seen some amazing success in school sport.

The Under 19’s took part in Football and Badminton. The Under 14’s completed the year with Basketball and then there was the Primary FOBISIA Games.

The Under 19 leagues have all been very tight this year. The girls have just edged the boys in most sports and with some frustrating 4th places in the leagues resulting in no silverware despite some valiant efforts. However, this was not the case this term. The girls were always going to be contenders for the league title and apart from a 2 – 0 loss to Utahloy, the rest of the league went unbeaten. In the end-of-season tournament, the first game was against Utahloy again and the result was reversed leaving us the favourites for the tournament trophy. However, on the Saturday a lot of our girls were unable to attend and this resulted in only having one sub and it stretched us one game too far. The UISG girls were narrow winners. However two 2nd place trophies and great performances from Debbie, Sophie and Valerie were highlights of the season.

The boys were much younger than their opponents and this bodes well for future years.

However, going into the league it was clear UISG were the out and out winners. A big early season defeat was soon overcome and the heat was on for the 3rd place trophy behind CIS. It was always going to be between us and AISG. Our boys were primed for the game and when we met at Tonghe, our boys ran riot scoring 8 goals and putting in a convincing performance. In the tournament the AISG boys edged it – again, due to some students being absent and star defender Henk missing, it was just one game too far. Despite creating several opportunities in the AISG game, hitting the bar and making their goalkeeper work overtime it was not meant to be. The boys came 4th in this one.

The U14 boys have one team at AISG in Division 1 and one in Shenzhen for Division 3. The season had gone better than expected and hopes were high going into the competition. The boys in Division 1 won all their group games resulting in competing in the play off for the final. This game was relatively easy and then it was the final against CGS. Despite being 11 points up at the turn around, the boys got tired and faded. They lost by 7 in the end, but full credit to the team featuring 4 year 8 students. Final position: 2nd.

The Division 3 guys, after the long trip were up against an unknown SIS team. It started off quite tight and then we found our form. Andy Liu, Ross Flower and Tian dominating attack and defence. It was the same again against UISG and then the tough game of the day against AISG. We had played twice and the score was 1 a piece but this one mattered.

Going into the final quarter it was all square but then our boys turned on the magic and stretched out to get an unassailable lead. The boys then had to compete against AISG for the final match. Again it was close but out strength in depth paid dividends in the final quarter. Ross and Andy hitting layups and Tian getting the rebounds. Despite being one point down at the beginning of the 4th we ended up winning by 11. A great success for our second string boys! Final position. 1st

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Basketball On Saturday, the Girls’ A Basketball Team travelled to Country Garden to play in the last tournament of the season, the Division 1 PRC Basketball Tournament. We played Country Garden in the first game, which we dominated and won 18-4. The second game was against ISD who we had beaten before, but were a tough team.

We ended up beating them 27-12. This meant we had come 1st in our pool.

We then played against 2nd in the other pool to see who would go to the finals.

This was against QSIS. We had not played them before, so we were a little nervous, but we ended up winning this game 20-0. This meant we were facing ISD again in the final. We started off badly giving away 3 baskets and ISD took the lead. We were nervous and it showed in our game, we couldn’t seem to shoot the ball in the net. Candy scored some good lay ups to get the score to 4-6. ISD scored again.

We were having trouble defending against one of their players who was so tall and if she got the ball she would always get it in the net. The game continued in this way and we got a little frustrated as we could not get the same momentum as in previous games. We ended up losing the game by 2 points.

We were very disappointed to lose a game against a team we had already beaten twice before. But ISD upped their game in the final and we could not match it. Overall a very successful tournament for us and we came 2nd place. Well done to Candy, Coco, Leiah, Angel, Caitlyn, Karina, Tracy, Liz and Rachel.

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Leadership In Sport By: Rachael Troughton In Year 10 and 11 Core PE lessons, 11 students are taking the Sports Leadership Award.

This is an accredited course with UK Sports Leaders.

For this, they learn extensive theoretical knowledge about leading activities, including completing a written portfolio.

They must also take part in 10 hours of sports leadership with young people. The sports leaders have recently organised and run some inter-house competitions which have been very successful.

They are now planning an hour long activity session for primary students each week.

These involve organising all the equipment, running the warm up, teaching a skill, practising the skill and then putting the skill into a game situation.

They then conclude with a cool down. Children in Year 3 who took part in hockey and dodgeball commented that they really enjoyed it and it was so much fun!

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Junior Prom

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Primary FOBISIA Games

To the BSG staff for their incredible dedication in running training sessions and supporting students throughout the event.

To the parents for travelling in their droves to get behind the team and providing so much great support for BSG. To the students for their shear determination and commitment over the year and for making everyone proud to be part of BSG. 31